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Site Review: Haring Kids

Content: Haring Kids brings the art of Keith Haring to life while offering a creative and engaging collection of over 180 art-based educational resources for the early-childhood to high-school levels.

Design: The site’s design is extremely engaging, with fun animations and drawings distributed throughout the interactive site map. Hovering over accessible areas prompts movement and color from Haring’s lively drawings. Navigation might seems a tad confusing, given the site’s somewhat cluttered look, but don’t let that fool you. After accessing specific content, most of this site’s pages change into a standard top-bar or sidebar dropdown menu. While many areas (like the Games section for younger students) feature different designs, all sections remain easy to navigate. A slight downfall is that after leaving the homepage, users aren’t always offered a simple link back.

Review: For teachers hoping to bring a little color into their classrooms, Haring Kids showcases the artist’s attitude and style while dishing out loads of educational art fun. Colorful pop-art games such as Hangman, or the site’s unique interactive coloring books, offer younger students inspirational learning experiences. Lesson plans such as “Hip to be Square” combine music, math, dance and drawing. “T-shirt Designer” lets students have a blast while exploring career options in art and fashion. In addition, teachers and students can view others’ work in the ample School Projects Gallery.

Bottom Line: Bringing to life even subjects such as math and social studies, Haring Kids will become an instant favorite of any art teacher.